Wednesday

Well today was one of those weird days that had the weather changing just about every hour and eventually ran us into the cabin around 3 PM and we never ventured back out. That is so unreal here in the mountains. We rolled out to start the day around 7:30 and after our quiet times I joined Nancy with a bowl of boring oatmeal with a little cinnamon and a few blueberries. After eating I headed out to check on the gardens, new seedlings and new cutting I made.

The Swiss chard is up as well as the 2 kinds of lettuce I sowed a couple days ago. The basil seedlings are putting on a second leaf as well as the 4 tomato cuttings I made from the existing Celebrity tomato plants and a Big Boy plant that came up volunteer. I only once before tried that method of starting tomato plants from a cutting but so far they look healthy. I also started a couple blueberry cuttings accidentally as I noticed a broken limb on one of the bushes and I stuck it in the ground; needless to say after 4-5 days the broken limb looked great so I googled starting blueberry bushes from cuttings and sure enough its done all the time. A little Root Tone is helpful which is a powdered hormone you dip the cutting in before sticking in the ground. The potted volunteer cone flowers are sending out a new leaf so these will be ready for transplanting in another week or so.

After piddling around in the garden I headed up on the back porch roof to paint the outside of the window. It really needed a re-paint as the old paint was starting to peel. That took me an hour or so and by 11AM I was ready to head to the top of the mountain for our one and only hike of the day. The top of the mountain was like a ghost town as we saw no one and the mountains in the distance were shrouded with fog which was very much like the Smokies. It had warmed up close to 70 by the time we got back to the cabin. We had a lite lunch as I cleaned up the leftover bean soup that I smothered with sweet onions and a fresh jalapeno pepper; Nancy settled for a garden salad.  After lunch I picked a bag of yellow cherry tomatoes and green peppers for our neighbors who are down from Ohio. We stopped and visited with them after our trip to the mailbox on the golf cart.

We decided after the visit to just take it easy as there were lite rain showers off and on so we sat on the porch and deck in the sun. The sun felt great as the temps were just into the 70's when suddenly the rain rolled in and the temps dropped into the low 60's. We headed inside while the rain fell and the breeze really cooled things down, so we closed all the windows and sat inside reading until 5:30. We finished the leftover pot roast and all the fixin's as well as fresh broccoli for supper. I added a fresh salad as well. I did the clean up while Nancy was on-line and it was still lightly raining so we decided to watch the news on FOX and stayed in the cabin, yikes was it ever chilly out with the dampness and a slight breeze.

Our "mountain mom" called on her car phone and informed us she had been without the Internet and her local phone all day as someone in the area cut the cable; finally around dark she had her service restored. That is such a hopeless and frustrated feeling as we experienced that last year in Florida when we lost our land line for a week. Well that's about it for the day as we wait to see which way this hurricane Issac is going to go. Right now the fore cast has it heading toward the Tampa Bay area and of course that is where our kids and grand kids reside as well as our winter home. Hopefully it will blow itself out before land fall and cause no damage. Too bad we couldn't steer all that rainfall into the drought areas of the country where much needed rain would be welcomed, LATER